Greek Painting: Hellenistic Period (323-27
BCE)

A piece of mosaic
art (a 50 CE copy of an original created 300 BCE) depicts the encounter
of Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius at the battle of Issus
in 333. The accurate depiction of contemporary Persian
costume is strong evidence that the mosaic is a faithful copy, executed
in the four-colour system. The background is a white void and the single
object in it is a lopped and leafless tree, inserted to balance Darius
more than to suggest landscape. The foreground too is blank, except for
a little debris from the fighting. The artist's interest is concentrated
on his figures, modelled with bold light and shade, expressive of feeling
and arranged in a crowded but carefully controlled composition.

The mosaicist who made this copy in the
first century must have coarsened the effect of the original picture,
since its fluent lines and gradations of colour had to be rendered by
square tesserac, each of uniform tone; but even so, it is an extraordinary
feat of virtuosity, and all the more valuable because among our remains
of ancient painting there is nothing comparable to this battle piece.
Without this Alexander mosaic, few students would have believed that there
were pictures of this kind in Greek art
from the late fourth century.

Landscape

Painting during the period of Hellenistic
Art (c.323-30 BCE) seems at first to have exaggerated the pathos exhibited
in the Alexander mosaic, and to have developed a more richly pictorial
style, of which the main frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamum (170 BCE),
is a counterpart in Greek sculpture.
(See also: Greek Architecture:
900-27 BCE.) But in the second century, an academic reaction began, and
with it intensive adaptation and copying.

Of new kinds of painting, landscape
was probably the most important, though again we have only one good example,
the incomplete set of illustrations of the Odyssey (c.150 BCE), found
in a house on the Esquiline hill in Rome. The Odyssey landscapes were
painted in the first century, but may be copies of pictures a hundred
years or so earlier. Here the figures are dominated by the setting, which
is emphasized by strong light and shade, the brush-work is competently
sketchy, and in the distance the colours fade with a skill that shows
established practice. See also: Mythological
painting (460-1960).

Curiously, in this sophisticated illusionism
some old-fashioned conventions are cherished. Many of the figures have
their names written neatly beside them, so that we know at once whom Odysseus
is meeting. Yet the Alexander mosaic and the 'Perseus freeing Andromeda'
had managed without this labelling. Odyssey landscapes were, Vitruvius
says, a favourite subject of late Hellenistic painting, and the Esquiline
set is too slick to have been pioneering work.

Both the 'Astragalizusae' and the Alexander
mosaic are copies of good quality, but presumably their originals were
better. How much better we are never likely to know, since the chances
of finding an original Greek masterpiece from the this era are no better
than from the Archaic or Classical periods. It is clear though that the
general standard of competence was high, even in provincial studios. Here
the Fayum Mummy Portraits are
a better guide than the interior decorations of Pompeii. Though of the
Roman period, they still continue the Hellenistic traditions of portraiture
and brushwork.

[Note: For information about ceramics
from ancient Greece, including the Geometric, Black-figure, Red-figure
and White-ground technique, see: Greek Pottery:
History & Styles.]